CHAPTER XIV

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THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE.

We expected Esther quite early in the morning to tell us how she liked the world, but the morning-hours passed, and lunch-time, and still she had not come.

However, just as little Annie was carrying in the big tea-tray--which the robust appetites of the younger Brandons demand--to Aline's room, we heard the little pony-carriage drive up, and in a minute or two we were welcoming our Cinderella home from the ball. Esther certainly looked a very different person from the radiant princess of last night. Our winter jackets have grown rather threadbare, without any great hope of new ones, and Esther's seemed to show unusually thin and skimpy in the western light which was pouring in on the tea-table and its hissing urn and pile of hot cream-cakes.

"Well," said Lady O'Brien emphatically, as she seated herself, "I have brought the belle of the ball to see you. Congratulate her, my dears!"

Esther blushed, and we all laughed, knowing Lady O'Brien's way; but the old lady was in earnest this time.

"I assure you there hasn't been such execution since I came out myself at the very same Hunt Ball, and the next morning there were no less than three challenges over the last dance I had to give. Ah! my dears, there are no such men nowadays, as I'm never tired of saying. Sir Con O'Doherty winged Counsellor Slattery, and poor Tom Kinsella went with a ball in his knee from that day. And to think I passed them all by for Peter, that sat mumchance in a corner and hadn't the spunk to approach me for a dance. All the better it was, for if he had he'd have torn my Limerick flounce in flitters, and that's something I'd never have forgiven."

She stopped to take breath, and Pierce put in:

"I hope Essie's been spilling no blood, Lady O'Brien."

"Only heart's blood, my dear boy. It's all that's ever spilt now, more's the pity."

"I suppose in your day they tapped the less important organs. You talk as if the seat of life were somewhat less important than--the nose, shall we say?"

"Hear the impudence of the boy!" cried the old lady, diverted. "I'll be after tapping your nose, my fine fellow, one of these days, if you give me any of your sauce."

"Well," said Aline, coming in, "I hope Essie had a very nice time."

"It's like your cold-bloodedness to put it that way, Aline," said the old lady; "but all I can say is that if Studderts and Ffrenches and Macnamaras come proposing for Esther, you just tell them that they'll have to wait till she sees more of the world and has had her pick and choice."

"Poor Essie! is she to become a worldling then?" said Aline, with a fond glance at Esther, who had kept silence, as was often her way, while we all chattered about her.

"You haven't taken off your jacket, dear. Aren't you hot?" she said, noticing that Esther still wore her outdoor things.

Esther looked shyly at her godmother.

"Well, Aline, my dear," said the latter, "to tell you the truth, Esther's not going to take off her jacket. She has promised, unless you and Pierce forbid it, and I don't think you will, to try what life is like with a cantankerous old woman."

"What! To live with you, Lady O'Brien?"

"Yes, my dear, to make me so happy, if it will not mean unhappiness to herself. There are so many of you here, Aline, and I am a lonely old woman with a very thirsty heart for a little girl of my own."

Aline looked at Pierce.

"Esther seems to have consented," he said, glancing at her half-fearful face. "Eh, Essie?"

"Yes, Pierce," Esther said in a low voice.

"Well, that being so, Aline, I don't think it's for us to forbid it. Esther's old enough to choose for herself."

Lady O'Brien turned round and gave him a hug which disarranged all his pillows, so that Aline had to come and shake them up again. As she did so I noticed that she touched Pierce's face lightly with her cheek. Perhaps Aline felt that he too would soon be going away from her--a longer journey than across the valley to Annagower. When she had arranged him comfortably in silence she came back to her seat behind the tea-table.

"Very well, dear friend," she said, "there is nothing for us to do but to thank you and say yes. But Esther will need some preparation."

"None--all that is my affair, Aline. If you could know how I have longed to dress a girl."

So Esther never took off her jacket at all, but sat there like a visitor paying an afternoon call, crumbling her cake into her saucer absent-mindedly.

But she was not going to leave me like that. I went over to her and put my arm round her neck.

"Come for one more talk, Essie," I whispered, "while you are still ours and not Lady O'Brien's."

For I don't think any of them felt Esther's going as I did. We had always been so closely knit together, as close as the twins, or Aline and Pierce, and though of late the tie had been loosening a little, yet I had never felt that it could fray or grow thin. She came without a word.

When we had reached our own room upstairs we sat down on my bed side by side and twined our arms about each other. So we sat in silence for several minutes. At last Esther whispered in my ear, in her low passionate voice:

"We shall never be less to each other, Hilda,--never, never. Never, till all the seas run dry."

But she was going away, and I felt that things would not be quite the same again, and so I felt I could not speak, but a few very bitter tears--for I do not cry easily--came into my eyes, smarting and burning them.

"You will be happy, Essie," I said, "and your happiness is what really matters. And you will make that dear old soul as happy as the day is long."

"Happy?" she said, answering the first part of my sentence and not the last, "I do not know about happiness, Hilda. My dear old godmother would buy me the world if she could, but happiness may be beyond her reach."

There was something in the way she said it that alarmed me, and stirred all my late misgivings about Esther.

"There is nothing, Esther?" I whispered. "You are not in trouble, dear?"

She looked at me half-startled.

"I spoke generally, Hilda. Every one has trouble."

"Oh, is that all?" said I; but my mind was not the more at rest. Still, I did not want to surprise Esther's trust. I drew myself a little away from her as I asked in a sprightlier voice:

"And the ball, Essie. Were you really so brilliant a success as her ladyship says? Tell me all about it now that we are here quietly by ourselves."

"Oh, the ball!" answered Esther, coming back as from a distant country. "Yes, it was very fine, and every one was so kind. Even Lord Cahirduff would dance with me, though he has gout in his knee, and Lady Cahirduff, who is such a handsome woman, with gray hair and bright eyes, said she couldn't make out how it was we were such strangers, that she had known our mother well, and asked if she might call. But Lady O'Brien said she was to come to Annagower one day, Tuesday, I think. Lord Cahirduff is such a dear old man, and pays such handsome compliments, and Lady O'Brien and he kept up a fire of jokes, and Lady O'Brien seemed to like him very much, for she slapped him with her fan several times, and called him an impudent fellow, just as she does Pierce."

"Of course," said I, "he was one of her early lovers, and remained single for her sake years after she married Sir Peter. But the young men, Essie?"

"I will show you my programme," said Esther, producing it, very crumpled, from her pocket. "The young men were very pleasant, and I could have danced every dance many times over. The girls, too, were very pretty and beautifully dressed, and there were many I thought I should like to know. The only one who was not nice was that horrid little Miss Pettigrew. Do you remember her, Hilda, that day long ago at Annagassan Races? Well, she spoke to me once when I sat near her, resting from a dance, and was by way of being very polite, but I couldn't respond very cordially. She didn't seem to know many ladies, I thought, though she had plenty of partners."

"I daresay," said I, carelessly; "but she's not worth talking about. I see a great many initials here. Which of your partners did you like the best?"

Esther blushed.

"They were all very pleasant, dear Hilda," she said. And then, with a little jerk of the voice, as if she did herself violence in speaking:

"Mr. De Lacy was there too, Hilda."

"Oh, was he?" said I. "I was just thinking that the frequent 'De L.' here stood for him. And how is he, Essie?"

"He did not look well, Hilda, though he said he was well. Those internal hurts take long to heal, and then it must be horrible for him at Angry, horrible."

"It is plucky of him to stay there when he might be with his dear old grandfather in Warwickshire."

"Yes, isn't it? I think it noble of him, Hilda."

"He asked for us all?"

"Yes, most affectionately. He thought of everyone. He asked me if I thought Aline would ever withdraw her denial of Brandon to him. She might, Hilda, don't you think? It would be only kindness, seeing how alone he is and young, and ill fitted for what he has to endure."

"If he were our friend, Essie, he might have harder things to bear."

"What do you mean, Hilda?"

"You cannot guess?"

Suddenly Esther turned from me and hid her face in her hands. Her shoulders began to heave up and down, and a heavy sob broke from her. It struck me suddenly that this was the weeping of one used to a burden. The tears flowed very fast as if they had been held back for a long time, and the sobbing went on with a quiet patience that brought a pain into my own heart.

"Poor Essie!" I said, "poor Essie!" and then I put my arms about her, and let her cry her fill.

"Oh, Hilda!" she whispered at last, "he looks so ill, and I cannot bear it. They will kill him, and I shall die too."

"When did it all begin, Esther?" I whispered back again.

"The first minute we saw each other, I think. But he went away without speaking, and yet he knew I loved him, and I knew he loved me. It is love for ever with both of us, Hilda."

"You haven't been meeting him, Esther?"

"Oh, no! you don't think I could? Not secretly, and within Brandon walls. If I met him I should tell everybody. But I'll tell you how it happened. You know your hiding-place in the abbey, of which you gave me the secret?"

"My tree? Yes."

"Well, I used to go there after he left, where I could be quiet and think. You were keeping the house at the time with a cold, so I was undisturbed. And the second day I was there I saw him riding by, looking so sad and delicate. He did not seem fit to be on horseback at all. And while I was looking down at him, he looked up and saw me. I didn't show myself, indeed, Hilda. It was as if he felt I was there, and obliged me to show my face. I was wearing one of those pale monthly roses in my frock, and he halted under the tree and looked up at me, and called out, 'Give me your rose, Esther, and I shall understand'. And I threw the rose to him. You should have seen his face as he caught it. But I wouldn't stay to speak. I swung myself down from the tree, and ran away as fast as ever I could. After that it came by degrees that I used to be there most days to see him pass by, and every day I gave him a rose, and if it happened that I could not be there at that hour, I used to go early and leave the rose in the abbey window where he could find it."

"And was the rose all? Did you never speak?"

"He used to say a word or two sometimes, but I would not wait to listen. I knew he loved me, and just then Aline was so troubled about Pierce, and I could not bear to deceive her. I would have felt the deception a stain on our love."

"And it went no further than the rose?"

"No. Was it very bad, Hilda?"

"It was superhumanly good, Esther. But I am glad you were so good. However, you talked last night?"

"He said a great many things which I had always known," she said, her cheeks all one soft fire.

"Well, Essie dear," I said consolingly,--during her recital the tears had dried themselves away on her hot cheeks,--"we must only hope for the best. Of course it's a pity you should have selected the grandson of the hereditary enemy to fall in love with, but, as a matter of Christianity, there's no reason why the feud shouldn't lie with Sir Rupert in his grave. He made it, and I don't see why it shouldn't end with him. And then it would be a pretty bit of poetical justice if his heir should marry one of the family he has impoverished."

"Marry!" cried Esther; "I had not thought about marrying!"

"I don't suppose you had," said I, "but those things generally end that way. All the same, I daresay it's as well you shouldn't think about it just yet, for I've no doubt that the fact that Sir Rupert is still alive will indefinitely postpone it."

"I should be satisfied," said Esther, with one of her enraptured looks, "just to know that he loved me, and that things were well with him. I think I should be happy so, if I were never to see him."

I kissed her for answer. Dear Esther, she was always one to give up all and never count the cost.

"Now, bathe your face and come down," I said, after a few minutes, "or Lady O'Brien will think I have kidnapped you. By the way, you will tell Aline that you met young De Lacy at the ball?"

"I suppose so," said Esther; "or will you, Hilda? I should be afraid of betraying myself."

"I daresay your godmother will save us the trouble," I suggested.

And, sure enough, when we went downstairs the first name we heard from Lady O'Brien's lips was De Lacy. Fortunately the room was full of dusk and firelight by this time, so that the mantling colour which I felt sure Esther wore was invisible.

"I'm inclined to agree with you," Pierce was saying as we went in. "If I'd been here I should hardly have backed up Aline in shutting the door against the lad. He had right on his side when he refused to be made an enemy on his grandfather's account."

"He's a throw-back, as his father was before him," said Lady O'Brien, "or how does a De Lacy come by those gentle eyes and delicate ways? It makes him less of a match for old Rupert."

"Still, he has plenty of courage," said Aline, "or he wouldn't be shut up in Angry with those two wicked old men."

"Indeed, then, 'tis no place for him," asserted Lady O'Brien. "And more betoken, he is going to have the run of my drawing-room, I can tell you."

I saw a quick look of alarm in Aline's face. If that speech had been uttered before she had consented to Esther's going, her consent would have been harder to extract. But now it was too late to withdraw, and so poor Aline, with a melancholy visage, said good-bye to the sister whom we should see constantly, but who had nevertheless gone out of our house and our home, for ever in all probability. Such

## partings, even in the happiest circumstances, are sad things.

That night, as I was going to bed, Aline came in and kissed me with unusual fervour.

"Ah, little Hilda," she said, "we are beginning to dwindle!" and I knew she had it in her mind of who would be the next to go.

"But it is good for Esther," I said, though my own heart was full of tears.

"Yes, Lady O'Brien has already provided for her. Sir Peter's money returns to his family, but she has a comfortable sum to live on in her own right. So that two of the children are now safe out of the clutches of poverty--Freda and Esther. We who are left ought not to repine."

If there was anything else at her heart she did not speak of it to me that night.

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